Relationship of Spatial Heterogeneity for Vegetation and Aeolian Sand Soil Properties on Longitudinal Dunes in Gurbantunggut Desert

The Gurbantunggut Desert is located in the semi-closed Junggar Basin, with a drought climate of a temperate zone desert. The desert landscapes are diverse, and are dominated by various longitudinal dunes, crescent dunes and crescent chains, and honeycomb-shaped dunes, with the height of 10–50 m.

Vegetation pattern and its response and feedback to the habitat has been a main topic for ecological study. Understanding a desert and the relationship between the pattern of desert plant communities and the microhabitats are important to explain the ecological processes in landscapes of arid and semi-arid regions. There were many studies on the spatial heterogeneity of vegetation and soil physical–chemical properties and their interrelationship for arid and semi-arid regions. However, few discussions were conducted on the spatial heterogeneities of vegetation and soil physical–chemical properties at a longitudinal dune scale and on the coupling relationship in the sand desert.

The Gurbantunggut Desert is not only the largest stable and semi-stable desert in China, but a typical area with the most abundant plant species and genetic resources found in the temperate zones desert on earth. Among the landform morphologies found in the sand deserts, dominant longitudinal dunes are the most representative. Longitudinal dune is the most important geomorphic form of wind accumulating sand and over half the area of the sand deserts in the world is covered by longitudinal dunes.

To provide a reference for studying the ecological progress of vegetation spatial patterns in the temperate sand deserts, Prof. QIAN YiBing et al. took the longitudinal dunes in the southern Gurbantunggut Desert as the study area. By using geostatistical methods, they analyzed the spatial heterogeneity of soil physical–chemical properties and vegetation and their interactions.

The results showed that the vegetation pattern and aeolian sand soil properties were moderately to strongly spatially heterogeneous as a whole, with a spatially dependent range of 8.8–74.8 m. The autocorrelated spatial range A₀ and fractal dimensions of the vegetation cover and the herberious synusium diversity were similar to these of soil water contents. The coarse grain size (φ1) and sorting (σ) of soil, the diversity of herbaceous synusium and the vegetation cover had a closer dependent range A₀, being 37.8–57.8 m. The trends of spatial variation for organic matter and total nitrogen contents were very similar to that of vegetation cover. The findings indicated that the spatial heterogeneities of soil pH and salt content were mainly restricted by terrain and basically not related to vegetation.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The result was published online in Environmental Earth Sciences on November 26, 2012. The paper can be downloaded from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12665-012-2039-7?LI=true#.

Contact:

Prof. QIAN YiBing

Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China

E-mail: dt6@ms.xjb.ac.cn